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Thursday, 27 March 2014

The question has allways been, for me, do I 'reboot' UK Golden Age comic characters or do I leave them as they were?

Let's
be honest here: there was no big writer-artist teams in UK comics of
the 1939-1951 period. No Simon and Kirby's. We've never really had an
idea of what creators were paid in those days but I'm going to guess it
was not a great deal. Comics were cheap, throw-away entertainment that
only cost a few pennies.

Gerald Swan is the best known
publisher from this period and his attitude seemed to be that there was a
huge gap in the market left by import restrictions (thanks to that
Hitler bloke). Swan was an entrepreneur and he paid what he thought was
appropriate. No doubt Harry Banger and others who could supply strips
on a weekly basis got the best deals but even then the creator had to
keep churning out the work.

I doubt that one of these
men -or women- sat down one day and plotted a long term storyline for
their characters. This was not the "Marvel Age of Comics" and with all
the restrictions facing publishers I doubt whether many even believed
more work would be coming in and even if it was -for how long?

So, it was basically a strip with a few vizual gags and then a punchline
or "wham bam action!" in the space of one or a few pages. No great
characterizations.
Take Zom of the Zodiac
by S. K. Perkins. One story in which Zom peeks around a corner, turns a
bullied man into a taller, better looking man to trouncew the bully but
when said man becomes too full of himself...Zom changes him back. Yes,
probably a moral in there and we Brits loved some morals in our comic
strips! But you have to ask -"What?" "Who?" "Why?"

I've
used Zom now for almost 30 years and developed him into a more complex
character but those questions still apply to a degree. He seems to be
friends with The All Seeing Eye, has had a hand in guiding super
heroes/crime-fighters over the decades if not centuries but we still
have no 100% answer to who or what he is. The Green Skies will see a
little more revealed and, perhaps, a glimpse or hint at who he might be.

And
TNT Tom, and later his cousin Tina: given powers by aliens, Tom saves
miners after a cave-in, stops a gang of cop-killers and even saves Earth
from biological attack by aliens. His main concern? That his dad does
not find out "the Wonder Boy" is none other than his own son. Luckily,
the odd press photographer is avoided but imagine TNT Tom based in 2013
with all the cameras, cell phones, dvrs and so on!

Characters
such as Moon Man or Marsman had one off appearances but over the years
they have been developed somewhat. In the Black Tower universe there is
life on Mars, albeit underground -even an explanation as to why the
various Martian races took that root. For the Moon Man, well, we have a
very rich literary history of Selenite civilisation from the pulps
onward. Both Mars and the Moon races feature in Green Skies (the
Martians referring to Earth people as "our biological cousins" which
ties in with the belief that life on Earth may have originated from
Martian meteorites).

Rodney Dearth, creator of The Iron
Warrior has been a bit of a regular in Black Tower over the years -can
anyone forget 2011s incredible The Iron Warrior Vs Big Bong??
Dearth was, as I've pointed out in previous postings, a typical
Colonial Britisher. Save you going all the way back to 2011 postings...

Was The Iron Warrior A Villain???

It occurs to me that,today,a lot of comickers who have no real
knowledge of UK Golden Age characters will make things up or make bad
guesses based on what they might have seen.

This can be said to be true when it comes to the Iron Warrior.

I can onloy find one source with any information on the character up to 1990 and that is the late Denis Gifford’s Encyclopedia of Comic Characters [Longman,London,1987]. In the entry for The Iron Warrior,Gifford writes:

“..the most violent and bloodiest strip ever seen in British comics
to this time,and for several decades to come. Rodney Dearth,seeking
the Jewels of Junius,arrives at the site of the Temple of Sloth in
Central Africa,accompanied by his robot,the Iron Warrior. Captured by a
White Princess,he summons the Warrior (‘wavelength 60,impulse 400′).
Crying ‘I come Master!’ and also ‘Ahrrr! Whoo-roo! Roar!’,the
Warrior’s built-in chopper slices up the Sloths,cuts up a giant
crocodile,and pulls the head off an outsize eagle.”

And from this we get entries in the Internationalheroes site:

“A robot controlled by Rodney Dearth, who used it to hunt treasure with him in Africa.
The Warrior isn’t really a hero, as it kills anyone who threatens its master, whose own goals are far from altruistic.”

Hmm. But then we get,at the League for Extraordinary Gentlemen fan site:

“The Surrogate League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

When the government decided to form the Worral’s League they based it very closely on Mina’s first League, “When
in 1946 it was apparent that Miss Murray and her colleagues had
deserted our employ by going missing in America, MI5 elected to replace
the group with surrogates in an attempt to recreate the impact of the
1898 ensemble…”

Wolf of Kabul = Quatermain (both in the great white hunter tradition, they even both wear pith helmets)

The Iron Warrior = Hyde (both really killers pressed into service).

The Iron Warrior is a robot built by Rodney Dearth, Dearth was not a
hero and had a more villainous overtone. He would command the Warrior
to do various illegal things, including kill people, but mainly Dearth
used him to hunt for treasure in Africa.”

YAAAR! RRRAHHH! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Oh. I do beg your pardon. Had a bit of an “Iron Warrior” moment
there. Seriously,I hate this whole “we know nothing about the character
but it seems it was a killer controlled by a killer so let’s write
that” crap.

“…Dearth was not a hero and had a more villainous overtone. He would
command the Warrior to do various illegal things, including kill
people.”

Dearth was not a villain or scheming killer.
Anyone read any old boys adventure books or H. Ryder Haggard? By
applying what the League page and Internationalheroes entry has written
then we have to re-classify Alan Quartermaine as a cold blooded
villain. In fact,up until more politically correct times,most heroes
would need to be re-classed according to this methodology. Biggles
takes on arch villain proportions. Even Indiana Jones would be classed
as out-doing the Nazis considering how many deaths he’s caused directly
or indirectly. Think on that.

Let’s get a little bit of perspective here. Sit down kiddies because
if you’ve not watched any films made between 1920 to…well…now,and if
you’ve not read any history on the British Empire or American
Imperialism ["Hey,Japan:we've gun ships and troops harbored offshore now
do business with us 'voluntarily' or we'll make you!"] -in fact any
empire or power!- you may be shocked.

Most sea-faring nations such as Spain,Italy,England,France etc.,sent
out exploratory ships/fleets to seek out new lands and new treasures and
subdue the local population by any means including genocide [keep some
alive for slaves,of course]. The Ashante were great at being slavers
and made a lot of money out of it. It’s a two-way thing you see -are
black african slavers villains? Hey,slavery still exists today and
amongst some of the West’s best pal nations.

But these Europeans were brave hero-explorers. Anyone hear of a little
group called the Conquistadores? Dutch East India Company? The
British East India Company -all had their private armies to,uh,”smooth
things through”.

Ever read King Solomon’s Mines?

In comparison,Dearth was a limp-wristed liberal! Hmm. If you were a
British soldier at Rourke’s Drift with Zulu warriors rushing toward you
would you throw down your rifle and wave -”Hello! I’m really against
all this imperialism stuff -care for tea and a chat?” Mind you,in Zulu Dawn,Denholm Elliott’s character more or less did just that -and was killed straight away!

Whichever city you lived in -London,Berlin,Paris- you would hear
stories of strange lands,lost treasures and much more. The urge to
follow those tales continue to this very day. If a chap was on his
uppers and the old estate was falling to bits and,to be frank,the family
coffers had been emptied long ago it was disgrace and destitution -but
if you could find the “lost treasure” or anything worth a few quid you
were saved!

I know that it is wrong to just go marching
in,putting down the “locals” and stealing things that belong to
them,whether they want to exploit it themselves or not –hey,I’m still
for returning the Elgin Marbles and all those Egyptian artefacts
we,uh,borrowed!

The context is that this was a totally different world. Officers and
troopers posing for photographs of themselves resting their feet on a
heap of natives heads should have been totally unacceptable even in the
19th century but it happened -apparently “fun” hunts were organised
with horse-riding officers carrying “pig-stickers” but I get a feeling
the natives involved weren’t having too much fun!

A white man would have his weapons because,even if a peaceful
person,not all native persons were friendly in return [read some
history]. I could write on the subject all day but it wouldn’t help.

The point is that we know,in the Iron Warrior strip,only that Dearth
arrives in Africa with his creation. If attacked he defended himself.
In volume 3 of the Black Tower Gold Collection,I published such a
strip. Dearth is exploring an area when a local priest stirs things up
-Dearth is attacked and,though he could easily do so,he does not set
about killing everyone. In fact,he does fend off an attack by rushing
straight at the warriors but then tries to use cunning to defeat the
witch doctor.

Once the threat is sorted,Dearth goes on his way. The one thing we see
is that the Iron Warrior is far from some type of remote-controlled
killer doing its master’s bidding. It’s what would today be called a
controlled vehicle or “power suit”.

Dearth get’s inside the Iron Warrior and operates controls and fires
his weapons from here. He also operates the axe-wielding arm. Guessing
at Dearth’s height the Iron Warrior has to be around 3-4 metres tall
[10-12 feet]. But,it is still nothing more than a kind of hostile
environment suit -almost similar to later [better designed] deep water
suits.

What Denis Gifford wrote I have to take to be accurate -he did have a massive collection. So,I’m guessing that
there was a remote control device and,it seems,a vocaliser of sorts.
This does not appear in the later strips I’ve seen. That
said,continuity was never a great strongpoint in comics back then.

Yes,the strip was violent but you have to recall that in early Tarzan
films there were people being killed violently and arrows sticking out
of heads. And,sadly,in war time Britain death was a daily event and kids
[and adults] enjoyed a good “Darkest Africa” story with some white
chap up against the natives.

So,do not think that,based on what people who have a narrow view of a
character write,that Dearth and the Iron Warrior were just deadly
killers. They weren’t.

The
thing is that you have to understand the age these characters come
from. Putting 21st century sensibilities or any modern day ideas into
characters from the mid-20th century just make them horrible Marvel or
DC style reboots

How does this work when the characters
come into contact with contemporary Black Tower characters? Well, buy
the books and find out! Following Green Skies there will be a more
formalised chronology for the characters so that there is a definite
JLA-Justice Society (Earth 1 and Earth 2) vibe going on. Though the
characters have met before the Green Skies saga will clear things up for
newer readers but -and I have to emphasise this- the characters are not
changed and certain not rebooted!!

If you cannot treat
characters with certain respect and try to stay true to how they first
appeared then you have failed as a creator. We do not have to reboot so
that TNT Tom is afraid his father will find out he is the Wonder Boy
because his father is a violent child beater!!

The
reaction from people who first read the comics as kids 60-70 years ago
and purchased the Black Tower reprints was that they were "over joyed"
and thought they would never see their favourite characters again.
Okay, not great sales but just those few comments give me a big boost.

You
can add or develop these old characters but you MUST be true to what
they were and, being honest, the industry is swamped in reboots,
darkness, blurry-lined "good and evil" and just not enough fun.

Yes, I'm an old fart but I think you still have to see comics as having some fun...

Tuesday, 25 March 2014

If you have not yet smelt the decay of
Man. If you have not yet seen the increase in terror, chaos and anarchy
in the world. If you have ignored the freakish weather and geological
upheavals. If you have not yet seen the green tinted skies.

Sunday, 23 March 2014

AND I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT ANY MASKED CRIME-FIGHTERS I PERSONALLY KNOW. JUST SAYING.

I was asked if I still had the link to this article (from
March,2012) by a number of people. Here is a re-posting with more art!

“Hmm. Don’t you understand? Think about it –we have no skyscrapers! How can you have American style super heroes in England?”

Those were the words of a Marvel UK editor (Dave White) back in the
1980s as I sat across from him having travelled from Bristol to London
at his suggestion to discuss new projects. About a month later a very
senior Marvel UK editor responded in the same words but adding “That is
why UK comics have never had super heroes.”

Firstly, as I pointed out to Dave White, we are the UK. Britain. You
think of characters for a comic as being English you are excluding
Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Why?

My response to the senior editor is probably why things went a little
“odd” work-wise. My first response was “So, what exactly is Marvel UK
publishing? And Power Comics (Odhams) before it? And…” I went on to
rattle off a very, very long list of British super characters going back
to the 1940s. I think I ticked him off. Really, he should have known better though, in one respect, he was right.

British comics never had super heroes.

Before you start thinking that I’m on new medications and answering “Yes” and “No” at the same time allow me to explain.

Tim (Kelly’s Eye) Kelly travelled the world and even in time and space at one point and was totally indestructible. He was not a super hero.

Clem Macy, television news reporter had a costumed archer alter ego…The Black Archer. He was not a super hero.
Cathy had amazing cat-like abilities and wore a costume. She was not a super heroine.

William and Kathleen Grange were incredible acrobats and wore costumes as Billy the Cat and Katie The Cat. They were not super heroes.

In fact, for my graphic novel featuring many old IPC and Fleetway costumed characters, The Looking Glass,
I noted several times that the characters were not super heroes. In
the UK we tended to call them “costumed adventurers” or even “masked
crime fighters” but not super heroes.

Some, of course, were…uh..”revived” for the Wildstorm Studios Albion
mini series which had great art but, sadly, showed a lack of any real
knowledge of the characters by the writers –which they admitted to. In
comics you get paying work you take it!
Characters such as Adam Eterno, the focal point in the Looking Glass
story had no choice and were at times almost anti-heroes. Whereas The
Spider had a choice of being a master crook and then changing sides
(basically all ego driven), Eterno did not. He was cursed to be taken
by the mists of time from one period to another where he encountered
Spanish Conquistadores, pirates, sorcerers and even modern day (well,
1970s) crooks.

Olaf (“Loopy”) Larsen a rather meek school teacher found the Viking
helmet of one of his ancestors and, donning it (that’s putting it on his
head) became a super strong, flying Viking hero…The Phantom Viking. There are stories of The Phantom Viking rescuing ships and much more and not a skyscraper in sight.

The great exponents of British roof-top crime-busting were, first,
Billy The Cat and later Katie The Cat. Running across the rooftops and
leaping the often not so great gaps between one row of terraced houses
and another, the duo were the fictional ancestors of today’s urban
free-style runners/jumpers –examples found here:

To most people who never get to see the rooves of terraced houses
they assume they are all steep and sloping. However, having on two
occasions chased someone across terraced root-tops I can tell you there
is plenty of room to move about (though at my age I now look back and
get nauseous over that memory!).

Later, in the 1970s, William Farmer became the costumed crime-fighter
known as The Leopard From Lime Street. As one Fleetway boss told me
(later confirmed by artist Mike Western) “Thomson had a schoolboy who
fights crooks in a costume and if Billy the Cat was popular I was sure
we could do better!”

Interestingly, in the Billy The Cat series he was later to be hunted
as a vigilante by authorities who did not like what he was doing.
Likewise, The Leopard was also hunted down at one point. In fact, a
number of British comic crime-fighters found themselves not just ducking
the crooks out for revenge but also the very side they were fighting
for!

Towns, cities, villages, countryside, coastal locations –all featured
in some very fun stories that endure in the memory to this day. And
not a bloody skyscraper in sight!

When UK creators were recruited to save the ailing US comic companies
such as DC in the 1980s (I was at those UK comic art conventions
watching how desperate they were to recruit British talent –and in some
cases introduced both parties to each other) the idea of outlawing super
heroes and tracking them down so they could be arrested was a new
concept. In the UK we’d been doing that since the 1940s ( thanks to the
creators who churned out material for publishers such as Gerald Swan)!
The mistake in the minds of publishers is that they equate costumed
crime-fighters with skyscrapers and the United States. Despite the long
history of such characters in the UK going back to the Boys Papers of
the 1900-1930s.

What it says, really, is “This is just a job. I don’t care about comics history.”

D. C. Thomson (may they be forever cursed in the hallowed halls of
British Comics Hell) have enough characters to produce good
costumed-crime-fighter comics. The same applied to IPC who appear to
have now taken the stance (a letter to me from senior management dated
19th July, 2011) “We were once publishing comics but that was
over 30 years ago and have no further interest in comics.” Of course,
had a rich stable of characters.

I have no doubt at all that a good “super hero” comics could work in
the UK but so few Independent Comics writers/publishers seem to be able
to produce an obscenities free scriptthat does not also include over the
top violence and rape –the “Millar-Ennis-Morrison Legacy (MEML).”

But let’s mention, I really must,
two shining examples of British “Super Heroes” by British creators that
have excellent plotting, story and action without having to resort to
the MEML.
The first is, naturally, Paul Grist’s Jack Staff.
Okay, he’s never accepted my offer to interview him in the last decade
but I’ll not hold that against him! When I first saw Jack Staff I
thought “**** that anatomy is really off!” I bought a copy. I’m a
comics bitch, I just can’t help it.

I read through issue 1 and do you know what? I..I..deep breath…I
enjoyed it! There it’s out now! The anatomy did not put me off and, as
the manager of Forbidden Planet (Bristol) said “It doesn’t make a blind
bit of difference –it’s so enjoyable!” With references to old British
TV comedy series and so much more each issue of Jack Staff was a must read. There was, I must point out here, a major flaw in each issue. There were not enough pages!
And while Grist takes a break from Jack Staff he came up with a new series –Mud-Man (which should not be confused with my German character Schlamm Mann
–mud-man!). Lovely stuff but, again, the major fault of not enough
pages but maybe that is why this works: it is almost episodic like old
British weekly strips…but with more pages…okay. Grist wins.

Then we have, and I have to say this on bended knees and in very humble tone…Nigel Dobbyn.
When someone told me that he was drawing Billy The Cat I remember
thinking to myself “I wonder whether his art style is any different than
when he was drawing for Super Adventure Stories?” (a 1980s comic zine). I opened up the comic and a big thought balloon appeared above my head in which was written in bold Comic Sans “WOW!”

The style and colouring I had not seen outside of European comics
(say Cyrus Tota’s work on Photonik). After that I never missed an issue
and I made a point of grabbing The Beano Annual
as soon as it appeared in shops. But with this incredible talent
working for them did Thomson take advantage? No, they did something
ensuring he would not work on new strips for them. The story can be
found here:

Dobbyn even re-introduced (with help from scripter Kev F. Sutherland, of course) General Jumbo but as The General. In fact, you go over those issues and I can see why so many people were telling me that they only bought copies for Billy The Cat. I could drool on and wax lyrical for hours about Dobbyn’s style and colouring.

Now here is the real kicker. Two talents such as Grist and Dobbyn
whom any UK publisher (I know –“Who??”) should be fighting, spitting and
kicking to get their hands on but are they? Nope. And while Grist
publishes his books via Image Comics you have to wonder why Marvel or DC
have not tried to get him on a title? Could it be his style is just
not understandable by people in US Comics such as Joe “I’ll sell that
for a Dollar” Quesada or Dan “I’ve had another brilliant idea on how to
destroy DC” Didio? What of Dobbyn, then?

I know that if as a publisher I had the money I’d be employing both full time!!

I need to stop mentioning Dobbyn now as my knees hurt (a lot) and it’s hard typing from this position.

What both creators have shown is that there really do not have to be
skyscrapers for a “super hero.” There is enough car crime, drug
crime…violent crime of most types going on in the UK and believe it or
not none involve a single skyscraper. Incredible, isn’t it?

Also, the UK is rich in legends, myths, fairy tales and much more
that are just crying out to be included in storylines. The reason the
Americans and other comic readers world-wide like UK strips is because
they are
uniquely British. In India, particularly in Southern India, The Steel
Claw, Robot Archie, The Spider and many others are still very popular in
reprint form over 35 years since they last appeared in print here.

Of course, now that the Evil Empire (Disney) has extended its
stranglehold on Marvel (Panini) UK nothing new from the UK is allowed
–though why doesn’t Panini with all its international branches pull in
some new characters/books of their own? Oh. Its cheaper tp publish
reprint material, isn’t it? I can be so silly!

Black Tower Comics has published a wide range of comics and the
costumed crime-fighters (or even non-costumed in the case of Krakos) are
the most popular.

So the market is there but where are the moneymen, the backers needed
to help revive the corpse that is British comics so that it can proudly
boast an industry once more that takes advantage of talents such as
Grist, Dobbyn and Jon Haward?

However improbable British super heroes might seem to sum I can tell
you they are not. There is a history going back 80 years and even
longer if you include the Penny Dreadfuls of the Victorian era.

Wednesday, 5 March 2014

It's been a while since I posted to this blog. There are several reasons why. The first is that certain folk have been grabbing scanned pages presented on this blog for the first time anywhere since they were first printed
and claim the scans are theirs. This happens all the time on the net so
it never surprises me but -BUT- I think it is sad that they cannot
share AND credit the original scanners without whom they -let's be
honest- would have nothing.But that is the nature of these people.

The other reason is that, oddly, I do get a lot of internet
attacks against me because I am "using scans without getting the
permission of the artists or publisher". My response is that most of
the publishers are dead. Some of the artists we do not even know -I've
spent years tracking down art and leads and naming more than a few.

What I also get are regular -about one every couple of months-
emails from American folk who want to know the copyright status of these
UK Golden Age characters (many I have been using -and a few with
permission from creators or publishers while alive- since the early
1980s. Why? Because they want to use them as "rebooted concepts"
whatever that is. I no longer answer these emails because when I
explained I had used some in my own works I got hysterical come-backs
such as "Oh, so EVERY Golden Age character is yours and yours only??" or
"You are stealing these characters and I want to use them properly!"
The US has hundreds of unused GA characters -use them.

Even the books I publish -at a loss (and that is provable) of Golden Age UK strips gets me grief. may have scanned a certain comic and if they did and I used something they get a credit. If the person scanned the book....

"Those are my scans!"/"I scanned that comic -have you credited me?"
Firstly, I thank those who provide scans but that, in some cases, is
vague because "Comic1947" is an internet pseudonym NOT a person's name.
Secondly, a person

Hey, I even at one point offered contributors of scans copies of the books their scans were used in. BUT no one wanted to give their names or addresses
so how do they know they are not credited? Odd. The comic community
used to be so different before silly web names came in. We used to
correspond but that is out of the question these days!

There are plans afoot for reprinting more old GA strips but in Black Tower Super Heroes amongst more modern day strips. Big collections that do not sell are too much work.

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About Me

THE UKs LARGEST INDEPENDENT COMICS PUBLISHER
Between 1984-1994 I worked freelance as a writer/artist/editor/agent in comics as well as comics journalism for MU Press,Blue Comet Press,Fantagraphic Books,Eros Comics,Dorne,Fleetway,IPC and others in the United States,UK and Europe. During this period I also produced large numbers of single panel gag cartoons for agencies in Germany such as Boiselle-Lohmann and Baaske Agency –these going to magazines and publications around Europe. I also worked as a freelance editor in comics and publications ranging from wildlife,astronomy and science fiction magazines.
From 1984 to present I've been self publishing comics as well as publications on a wide variety of subjects under the Black Tower banner.
I have also produced packages of work for companies in India,Hong Kong and China. I have also been working as an industry advisor for smaller companies in countries such as India,Canada,Singapore,China,Europe and the US. hoopercomicsuk@yahoo.com